The Spirit Lens

by Carol Berg

  As I crawled about the sooty floor placing the metal and braided threads and converting the rest of a broken chair into splinters and shavings enough to fill the trough, I considered what else we needed to know about the dead mule. But the odd construction of Dante’s circumoccule soon distracted me. Sand created a dispersed weight of base metal and wood. Braided threads effected proximity of silk’s component water and linen’s wood. But why cotton? The juxtaposition of particles fit no formula I knew. I argued with myself that Dante’s chosen materials were not based on the balance of the five elements, but rather on this keirna he believed in, and then wondered for the fiftieth time if his magic relied upon particles at all. By the time I’d poured a thin layer of sand from the hearth box atop the filled ring, I was wholly filthy and wholly confused.

  “I’ve finished, Master,” I said, poking my head through the doorway in the end wall, “and I—”

  Dante sat at a small writing desk next to an open window. The desktop was littered with paper, pens, and an ink bottle, and he’d wedged a small knife blade into the wood at one side, which puzzled me until the scattered shavings explained that this was how a man with one useful hand sharpened his quills. But the mage was not writing and did not acknowledge my presence. His elbow rested on the desk, and his forehead rested on his curled left fist as if he were in the deepest contemplation. His staff, wedged in the claw of his damaged hand, quivered almost imperceptibly.

  “Master, are you ill?” I whispered, not truly believing it so. His posture was too deliberate, the vibrant energies of the small room as vivid as midsummer sunlight along Aubine’s seacoast.

  Indeed he did not move or answer, and I lowered myself to the tidy bed lined up against the adjoining wall. This was a much smaller chamber than the other, intended as a wardrobe or manservant’s quarters, scarce room to walk between the bed, the desk, the night cupboard, and a small table. At the foot of the bed, atop an unopened traveling case, sat a worn leather satchel, stuffed to bursting with books and papers. Nowhere did I spy altar stone, tessila, spall pouch, or the smallest ikon of the Pantokrator. Not only was he heathen, but he didn’t care who knew it, a more honest display than some of us dared.

  The open satchel tempted me to discover what books he valued, but a distant bell striking the quarter hour stayed my hand. Just as well, for only moments later, Dante stirred and propped his staff against the wall. Grimacing, he massaged his temple, then ran his fingers down the scribbled papers on the desk as if to remind himself of what he’d written. “Are you finished yet, student?” he bellowed, without lifting his attention from the page. “Time passes.”

  “A while ago, Master,” I said, childishly pleased that he near knocked over his chair as he jerked around to find me so near. “You’re not ill.” A statement, not a question.

  “No.” Curt and stone-faced, he gathered a stack of sheets and passed them over. “Here’s what I need to begin work—both on the mystery and the deadraising—and enough things I don’t need to confuse anyone who reads the list. The last page tallies books. Most I’ve only heard about; don’t know if they really exist. Perhaps you’ll know better ones.”

  Resigned that he would reveal nothing until he was ready, I glanced through the lists. “A boar’s tooth, three pearls, camphor oil, black alder bark, an Arothian dagger, myrrh . . . all right. But nightshade? Smut rye? Shepherd’s purse? You think they’re going to supply a stranger with poisons, especially these last two that cause women to miscarry?”

  He shrugged and grabbed his staff. “If it gives them pause, so be it. I did warn the queen that if I am to tease Death itself, I must work with things that Death enjoys. She agreed. When can I get the spyglass and the other things?”

  “I’ll send for them today. Three or four days and we should have them. These books”—I glanced over the odd amalgam of standard texts, guessed titles, and terse descriptions—“can you read any of the ancient languages?”

  “I’ve a skill with languages. I’m likely better with Aljyssian than Orcasi.”

  Orcasi. Only people native to remote Coverge named our common tongue Orcasi instead of Sabrian. The ill-educated population of Sabria’s northernmost demesne scarce admitted six hundred years of Sabrian hegemony and spoke an ugly, guttural dialect of their own. That a man grown up in harsh, mountainous Coverge could read was astonishment enough, no matter that he could work the sorcery of a master mage. It explained a great deal about Dante’s rough manners.

  “If you ever need to leave anything for me, stuff it in that satchel,” he said. “It will always be out, but won’t necessarily be in the same place. No one can take aught from it. . . .”

  Naturally, my fingers were drawn to test his declaration.

  “Ouch!” Invisible steel teeth near ripped my fingernails out by their roots. I fell back on the bed, clutching my hand and groaning.

  “Not even you. The sensation gets worse, the longer one keeps contact with it. Eventually it would—well, you’ll know to be quick and not stuff my satchel with rubbish.”

  Wriggling my stinging fingers and cursing the day I lured Dante from his forest hovel, I followed him into the great chamber, where he was circling the ring, inspecting my work.

  “I’ve never seen a circumoccule quite like it,” I said.

  “Good. I intend it to keep them guessing.” He leaned heavily on his staff.

  “Them? The other mages?”

  “Whoever it was sneaked in here in the late watches. I weened it might take a bit longer for them to grow so bold, but then I’ve no experience of palace custom in the matter of sneaking. I suppose the Camarilla’s been dithered about me these three years past, yes?” Grimacing, he tugged at the band about his neck. “Every day of my life I suspect they put some devilish poison in this collar to drive me mad and bring me back to Seravain.”

  Understanding seeped through my thick skull. Naturally the two mages would be mad to know what Dante was up to. One of them—or some trusted adept or acolyte—would certainly try to examine his work. If they probed his circumoccule, they’d be flummoxed by its odd composition. “Yes. They’re most certainly curious. They’ll judge this worthless ”

  “And then, someday perhaps, I’ll raise a dead man in the center of it.” Eyes fixed on the center of the circle, he could not have seen me stop breathing.

  “Your purpose is not to practice necromancy, Master.”

  He shrugged, refusing to meet my gaze. “Likely any true sorcery would confuse them.”

  “If all goes well, I’ll fetch you to the deadhouse tonight after sunset. Then we’ll decide how to dissolve this unfortunate connection so I can begin asking some questions.”

  He nodded and folded his arms. Silently, dark brow drawn up in a knot, he watched me dab at the sorry grime of my shirt collar and gather his lists.

  “Divine grace, Master,” I said when I felt ready.

  He did not return the farewell, but as I laid a hand on the door latch, words spilled out of him as boiling water breaks over the rim of a pot. “Tell your king to be wary. Some violence is brewing, but I can’t say what as yet.”

  “How—?” But he had already retreated into the little bedchamber and slammed the door behind him.

  DAMOSELLE MAURA HELD COURT IN a writing room three corridors and two courtyards away from the mage’s apartments. A footman waved me to a velvet-cushioned bench beside the passage wall, where I waited alongside several other supplicants and stewed over Dante’s mysterious warning.

  “Present, Adept Fedrigo de Leuve.”

  I glanced up at a dark-bearded, bull-necked giant wearing an adept’s gray gown and a red sash. His nose looked to have been broken a number of times. So this was the perpetrator of Ilario’s crocodile charm and other “excellent magics” for Queen Eugenie’s household. Evidently his business was not as simple as the other supplicants’. Even the thick door could not mask the sound of agitated voices. He emerged, red-faced, after a lengthy consultation and stormed away.

  �
��Present, Sonjeur de Duplais,” said the footman, pointing at the door.

  The administrator welcomed me warmly. “So soon? Is all well with you?”

  “Perhaps better than with you,” I said, inclining my head toward the door.

  “We must all deal with thorns in our shoes,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Some are more difficult to be rid of than others. Ah, you’ve brought your thorn’s lists.”

  An hour we spent puzzling out Dante’s requirements. The lady accepted the more sinister materials with better grace than I had, and did not balk at oddities such as a barrel of battleground soil or a used rat trap.

  “Everyone in my family practices the art, sonjeur. I myself attended Collegia Seravain. But I found the constant study and repetition tedious, and when I heard that Her Majesty was searching for ladies of rank who were comfortable with magic, I leapt at the chance to move on.” A rosy flush deepened the rich brown of her complexion.

  Likely she had found little more success at Seravain than I. Though she had surely attended during my tenure as archivist, I’d neither met nor heard reports of her. Not so unusual. Seravain’s tutorial schedules were tight and demanding, and some students found little use from the library.

  “Unfortunate for the collegia, you didn’t find your proper calling there,” I said. “They need administrators so accommodating and efficient . . . and kind.” I’d met few people so easy to talk to. Women over age seventeen generally left me in mumbling incoherence.

  She radiated pleasure. “Here I serve only three mages, nine adepts, and seventy householders, not Seravain’s three hundred fifty. And I much prefer a royal budget to an academic one. Which reminds me, we must see to your accommodations. . . .” She jumped up.

  Ignoring two waiting supplicants, the lady herself escorted me first to the palace steward to obtain the keys to an apartment in the male householders’ wing, and then to his accommodating third secretary to arrange for someone to fetch my belongings and for delivery of letters and parcels. With entrancing wit, the lady dispensed bits of history to accompany each landmark along our route. By the time we returned to her writing room, I was wholly and entirely smitten.

  “From the traffic in this room, you must surely administer more than the queen’s consilium,” I said, struggling to revert to my more sinister business.

  She settled back in the chair behind the writing desk. “I accommodate Her Majesty’s family and a few other courtiers, as well—juggling apartments or personal servants, ordering books, hiring musicians for special occasions, making use of the contacts I’ve developed in my regular work. I know everyone in the palace and most tradesmen in Merona.” She tilted her head and peered at me closely. “Tell me, sonjeur, is something troubling you?”

  I steepled my fingers and pressed them to my mouth, attempting a show of contemplation before forging ahead. Perhaps not entirely a show. The subjects of death, faith, and Veil passages always left me discomforted. “No. No. I don’t think . . . You’ve done more than I can thank you for already.”

  “There, you see, something preys on your mind. Come, tell me. Mage Dante is despicably rude, setting you to such low tasks. I could speak a word to Her Majesty . . . release you. . . .”

  “Please no, damoselle. I am determined to stay on in the royal household. A few insults are bearable.” First things first. “I’m wondering—perhaps you could make a recommendation. After my presentation to His Majesty yesterday, I’m sore in need of a temple reader. Surely my father’s spirit flags after my injudicious references to his journey. And I must have his tessila resanctified after profaning it so selfishly. This fire in me has been so strong, I fear I failed in judgment.”

  She leaned across her writing table in great concern and laid a kind hand on mine. “Your devotion must surely speed your father on to Heaven. We have a temple minor here and so, three readers. But, of course, the only reader who can also sanctify tessilae is a deadhouse verger. . . .”

  And being precise and efficient as she was, Damoselle Maura drew me a small map to find the deadhouse, set between the temple minor and the swan garden. And she dispatched a note to Verger Rinaldo de Soinfe, saying that Portier de Duplais would be visiting him in the late evening for a reading and sanctification.

  I took Damoselle Maura’s small, warm hand and bowed over it. “You have been most kind, lady.”

  “There are more than just you who seek meaningful service in the world, sonjeur. If I can aid your search, I’m glad of it.”

  Lies I had expected in the role of agente confide; crass manipulation of sincere good feeling, I had not. I left the administrator’s office feeling soiled in more than my garments.

  I NEEDED TO DO SOMETHING about my crumpled, sooty attire before visiting the verger, so I sped off to locate my new apartment. No sooner had I opened the door than a trim young fellow carrying a pillow and towel darted in, skidded to a stop, and gave a jerky bow.

  “Divine grace, sonjeur.” He dashed a lock of yellow hair from his eyes. “I’m Heurot, manservant for your honored self and four other gentlemen as lives on this passage. I’ll empty slops, lug your wash water, and such. Leave your boots outside the door each night and I’ll see to ’em before morning. And what clothes need cleaning, lay out atop yon chest in the morning. Ye’ll take meals in the gentlemen’s refectory at the end of the passage. Have ye nowt I should put away, sonjeur?” He peered around the bare little room as if clothing and boots might pop out of the woodwork.

  “A small case should be arriving soon. More in a few days. But I don’t need much looking after. I value my privacy.”

  No more than sixteen, he displayed a ready grin. “I’m pleased to leave ye to yerself. Four gentlemen’s already a race to handle.”

  It was impossible not to return his breathless cheer. “Two small requests before you go. Are paper and ink available? And a clothes brush, if you would.”

  “Paper in the desk cupboard, sir; brush in the chest.” He yanked at a sticky door latch on the cupboard mounted above the writing table. Behind the door were two shelves and a shallow drawer, containing a sheaf and an ink bottle. “If it’s not enough, I can fetch more.”

  “These will do nicely.”

  He wielded the clothes brush with a deft hand and youthful vigor, ridding my doublet and breeches of prison dirt and Dante’s soot and sawdust. “Thank you, Heurot. Divine grace go with you. Oh—”

  My abortive call halted him in the doorway. “Sonjeur?”

  “You wouldn’t know . . . I’ve an appointment at the deadhouse this night, and I’ve heard a man was found dead within the palace precincts some few days ago. Are there funeral rites tonight? I’d not like to intrude.”

  “I’ve heard nowt of any such. There’s only Contessa Bianci dead as I know of, Lady Antonia’s waiting lady what popped off in her sleep this morning, and high time, too, the old pecking crow—angels forgive me for speaking ill of the dead. I doubt her rites’d be so soon. But a friend of mine, Grinnel, is a guardsman and’s posted evening watch at the temple gate this tennight. He’ll know.”

  “Fine. Good. Well done. I’ll seek him out.”

  The youth vanished in a breath of soap and boot polish.

  I made grateful use of the lukewarm water and towel that waited atop the washing table. Then I unstoppered the ink and set to work.

  As the palace bells rang sixth hour of the evening watch, I threaded my way through the palace maze. Letters to my mother, her steward, and the family’s man of business, giving notice of my changed residence, went into the steward’s post bag, along with a brief commission to a tailor in the village of Margeroux. In only a few days I should receive a package containing a new skirted doublet suitable for court wear, along with a silver coin, a bloody arrow, and a most unusual spyglass. Satisfied, I headed off to question a temple guardsman, fetch the mage, and visit the dead.

  CHAPTER SIX

  11 QAT 50 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY

  The deadhouse gates swung open at my touch.
The garden be yond lay quiet in the night, its thick plantings like a second wall, a moat of scent and thorn completely enclosing the blocklike stone building. Lantana and prickly juniper clogged the air with sickly, pungent aromas, and ghastly white blooms masked the sharp spines of blackthorn trees. Sabrians did not encourage the dead to linger. We wanted them to find their way through Ixtador to Heaven, lest the Souleater devour them on the last day of the world.

  The echo of the gate bell faded. But from the vast palace precincts behind me rose a mournful cry that chilled my soul, sounding far more like a despairing human than dog or feral cat. The business that awaited could not but make a man skittish and heartsick. The dead mule we’d come to see was a girl, so Heurot’s guardsman friend had told me.

  A balding, moon-faced man awaited me in the flickering yellow torchlight of the entry. “Sonjeur de Duplais?” he said, exposing his left hand on his shoulder. “I am Verger Rinaldo.”

  “Divine grace,” I said, swiping thumb to forehead in respect before exposing my own hand. “I appreciate your seeing me so late of an evening.”

  “I’m happy to serve your need, sonjeur.” He held the door open.

  I resisted the temptation to glance over my shoulder. Dante should be hidden in the shadowed peripheries of this garden. As I crossed the threshold, I dragged my hand across the mechanism of the lock, scraping it with the brass ring he had given me. No sooner had I whispered the key inclavio, than I snatched my hand away and stuffed it under the opposite elbow. My fingers stung as if I’d dipped them in a wasp nest. The mage had warned me his spell was crudely made and lacked shielding for the user.

  Much of a student’s first year at Seravain was spent training the senses to detect the existence of bound enchantments, the active energies of their release, and the residue that remained after some or all of those energies were used. Unlike the subtle sensations I had learned to associate with spellwork, Dante’s magic nipped at my senses like a wolverine’s bite—sharp, vital, as ferocious as everything else he did. I bled envy.